Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [72]
But this was not a ship and these were men on horseback.
Through the softly driving wind, I heard the horse approaching me. I saw it coming clearer and clearer.
I walked towards it. I heard a dim and terrible sound far off, beyond the horse, in the haze of green palms that marked the distant place that promised water.
The rider bore down on me.
“Holy Man,” he cried out. He tried to control his horse. It danced past me, and he came back. He held out the skin of water.
“Holy Man, drink,” he said. “Here.”
I reached for it, and the skin moved up and down and away, like something bobbing on a string. I kept walking.
He jumped down from his horse, this man. Rich robes. Flash of rings.
“Holy Man,” he said. He took my shoulder with one hand, and with the other he brought the skin to my lips. He squeezed the skin. The water poured into my mouth. It spilled cold and delicious onto my tongue; it filled my mouth. It spilled down over my cracked lips and onto my burning chest.
I tried to take it in both hands. He steadied me.
“Not too much, my friend,” he said. “Not too much, for you're starving.”
He lifted the skin; he poured the water down over my head and I stood with eyes closed, feeling it wash my eyes, and my cheeks, feeling it slip into the itching heat inside my torn garments.
There came a howl—his howl!
I stopped and stared forward. The droplets were clinging to my lashes. That was no ship I had seen, but only the magnificent trappings of a rich tent in the distance.
The howl came again. You dare!
“My friend, forgive it,” said the man beside me. “The sound you hear, it's my sister. Forgive her, Holy Man. We take her now to the Temple, one last time, to see if they can help her.”
The howl rose again and broke into a huge and hoarse laughter.
A whisper touched my ear. You'll stamp me out? Heart by heart? Soul by soul?
Again came the howl breaking this time into moans so piteous and terrible they seemed the crying of a multitude rather than one.
“Come now, sit with us. Eat and drink,” said the young man.
“Let me go to her—your sister.”
I staggered ahead, moving beyond his attempts to steady me.
The woman was bound in the litter. Beside the tent, the litter, roofed and veiled, shook as though the ground beneath moved it.
The shrieks and howls cut the very air.
Younger brothers gathered beside the older who'd given me the water.
“I know you,” said one of them. “You're Yeshua bar Joseph, the carpenter. You were at the river.”
“And I you,” I said. “Ravid bar Oded of Magdala.” I moved closer to the litter.
It seemed unthinkable a human could make such sounds. I looked past the tasseled and gathered curtains of the litter.
“Holy Man, if only you can help her—.” It was a woman who spoke. She approached with two younger women. Beyond stood the bearers of the litter, muscled slaves with their arms folded, watching, and there too the servants with the horses tethered together.
“My lord,” said the woman, “I beg you, she's not clean.”
I moved past her. I stood before the giant canopied litter and I opened the curtains.
She lay on a nest of pillows, a woman in her prime, her gaunt body sheathed in linen robes, and her brown hair soaked in sweat and crushed in a great nest beneath her. The stench of urine was overpowering.
Bound from neck to toe in leather thongs, her arms bound out as if to a cross, she strained and seethed in her rage, her teeth cutting deep into her lip. She spit the blood into my face.
I felt it hit my nose and my cheek. Then came her spittle, coughed up from deep within her throat and spewed at me.
“Holy Man,” cried the woman beside me. “For seven years, she's been this way. I tell you there was never a more virtuous woman in Magdala.”
“I know,” I said. “Mary, mother of two, and they were lost with her husband at sea.”
The woman gasped and nodded.
“Holy Man,” said the brother Ravid. “Can you help our sister!”
The woman on the bed convulsed and her scream ripped through the air,